It’s a big country

Australians have long had an obsession with ‘big’ monuments to small innocuous items – the Big Banana (Coffs Harbour, NSW), the Big Pineapple (Sunshine Coast, Qld), the Big Merino (Goulburn, NSW) and the Giant Koala (Dadswells Bridge, Vic) are but a few of a remarkably long list. Whilst many of us might consider this fascination, bordering on obsession, with ‘Big’ things to be very Australian, recent travels in China have revealed that we are not alone!

Of course, it is well known that China is a country comprising many genuinely big things – it has the biggest population, the biggest wall (the Great Wall), one of the longest rivers (the Yangtze), part of the tallest mountain (Mt Everest known as Mount Quomolangma in China) and many more. However, few foreigners know about China’s own ‘big’ monuments to the small and innocuous. So it was somewhat of a revelation when I discovered the ‘Big’ Rice Cooker on a road in the outskirts of the city of Zhanjiang, Guangdong. Though initially dumbfounded by this discovery, I quickly came to see the logic – Zhanjiang is a major manufacturing centre for electric rice cookers of all descriptions. In fact, more than 50% of all rice cookers in the world are manufactured here.

This discovery of the Big Rice Cooker spurred my thinking. Soon, I realised that some months earlier I had, in fact, already discovered another Chinese ‘big’ monument – the Big Hot Pot! A gigantic hot pot in ChongQing – a city famous for its spicy hotpot cuisine.  Now, my imagination runs wild with possibilities for other ‘big’ monuments here in China – perhaps the Big Chopsticks, the Big Panda, the Big Dumpling … surely the list would be endless big.